It's your time to shine: British Body Shop Awards

The British Bodyshop Awards return on 9 May at InterContinental London – The O2.

The event has become recognized as the biggest and best awards ceremony in the accident repair industry, established to celebrate excellence.

The Kitemark Excellence Award category provides recognition to bodyshops who have excelled in the way they have promoted their Kitemark certification, and the positive impacts it has had for their business.

If you would like to submit your company for this award please follow the link below.

BS10125 Scheme updates

Changes to the Kitemark scheme for vehicle damage repair are good news for body shops and garages, car makers and insurers, and retail and fleet customers.

For over 10 years, the BSI Kitemark for Vehicle Damage Repair has been helping repairers ‘prove’ themselves to motorists and work providers. Originally based at first on the publicly available specification PAS 125, and from 2014, on the full British standard BS 10125, it’s only given to repairers who have the technical competence and the management systems and procedures to operate and perform to the highest standards.

Consistency and quality are key to its credibility. A Kitemark is never awarded ‘for life’: BSI inspectors regularly return to ensure standards are being maintained and will revoke the licence to use the symbol if they uncover significant non-conformities and a client is unwilling to put things right.

The Kitemark: a sign of something special

Research shows us that the Kitemark really means something in the marketplace.

“Being associated with the widely recognised and trusted BSI Kitemark has not only enabled us to become an approved body shop for two national insurance companies, it has opened up more partnership opportunities for our business and showed our customers that we are truly serious about safe repairs.” - Trevor Reeve, Chairman, Pentagon Group

In other independent research carried out for BSI in 2012*, 84% of drivers said they’d feel more comfortable going to a Kitemarked repair centre — and a 2014 survey reported similar results, with 62% of 16-24 year olds and 72% of those aged 55+ saying they’d choose a garage that had a Kitemark over one that didn’t.

* An independent study conducted via OnLineBus for BSI. A total of 923 British adults aged 16+ were interviewed. Interviewing was conducted by online self-completion from 11th – 15th October, 2012. The sample was weighted to represent the 16+ population of Great Britain.

The business benefits

The confidence of work providers and motorists, coupled with the rigour of the scheme, translates into significant business benefits for Kitemark licence holders.

Again, we think the evidence speaks for itself. In a 2015 survey of customers licensed to use the Kitemark for Vehicle Damage Repair:

92% said that BSI inspectors were experts in their fields and delivered an excellent service

72% saw improvements in the quality of their repairs

95% said their staff were better trained as a result of the Kitemark scheme

63% saw an increase in the efficiency of their processes

80% saw reduced operational risk

There are other, knock-on effects, of course: the better the quality of repairs, the lower the risk of re-work, and the lower the risk of re-work, the lower the costs to the business.

It’s important to emphasise that the Kitemark is not just a promotional and marketing tool: it’s a tool for continuous improvement and risk mitigation. Because we ‘inspect’ management systems as well as repairs, we help ensure there’s the ‘internal infrastructure’ for a business to continue to perform well and deliver excellent service over time.

Put simply, the Kitemark makes a business better and keeps customers safer. The corollary is that work providers that choose Kitemarked repairers protect and enhance their own reputations — and their own businesses.

The award of the Kitemark starts a chain reaction that benefits everyone — from the company that made the vehicle to the company that insures it to the body shop or garage that repairs it, right through to the person who drives it, and that person’s family and passengers.

The even better news is that recent changes to the scheme, effective from 01 August 2017 have consolidated the benefits.

The new and improved Kitemark for Vehicle Damage Repair

To give the Kitemark even more meaning in the marketplace and make our customers even more competitive, we’ve introduced three ‘optional extras’ as part of the ‘package’. These are summarised below:

Clients who have more than seven members of staff in total and who therefore are usually subject to six monthly ‘spot checks’ can now elect for one of their visits to be ‘announced’ — provided they’ve performed well in the previous two visits and continue to do so. This change recognizes that unannounced visits can cause additional pressures and interrupt workflow, possibly to the detriment of the business and its customers. It does not just benefit garages and body shops, though: by providing an incentive to maintain standards, it benefits car makers and insurers and, ultimately, retail and fleet customers.

All clients can now opt for annual BSI certification to Cyber Essentials, the government scheme that, partly through external testing of Internet-facing networks and applications, reassures customers their data — and their customers’ data — is safe and secure.

All clients now have the choice of BSI assessment for compatibility with FCA customer complaints procedures — the opportunity to bring procedures into line with those used by FCA-regulated insurers.

In addition, all outstanding clients — irrespective of number of employees — will now be automatically shortlisted for the Kitemark Excellence Award at the British Body Shop Awards.

Combined, the three new options reflect the new realities of doing business today, and we believe they’re in the best interests of everyone involved in the automotive industry and of motorists and consumers. We also believe take-up of them will be high. They come with no catches; there are no hidden costs. In fact, we offer them all for free — although we would charge a fee if a client failed the test for Cyber Essentials twice and asked us to repeat it a third time.

The rationale for the re-launch of the scheme is simple: standards and our service must evolve to reflect changes in the wider business environment; we cannot improve the businesses of others unless we improve our own.

For more information on the Kitemark for Vehicle Damage Repair, please get in touch with us. Whether you’re new to the scheme or an existing licence holder who wants to discuss their options with us or a work provider who wants to know more about how we work, we’d love to hear from you.